


Find Me in the Stars

by captainellie



Category: Avengers Grimm (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, F/F, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 09:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17041190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainellie/pseuds/captainellie
Summary: Red Riding Hood will hunt the Wolf to the ends of the universe for what he did to her family. Cinderella will patch her up every time she falls.





	Find Me in the Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Thanks to my beta.

Red smells the Wolf long before she sees him. He stinks, sweat, old blood, rotting flesh, and animal musk. The old furs he wears shed in clumps she finds stuck to gorse bushes and jagged bits of stone. Planet’s been in a drought for the better part of a year, and the ground too hard for clear footprints. She catches the smudge of a boot where he turned sharp, a spot in the dust that might be where he stepped as he climbed past a boulder.

She pushes her hood back. Two suns out this time of year, one gold one blue, and they beat down on her, baking the sweat into her scalp. Her lips are dry and cracked. When she licks them, she tastes blood.

Red’s tracked the Wolf across ten planets in the last three months. Along the way, she picks up small jobs, escorting a train hauling supplies across a newly settled world without enough peace officials, security shift for a traveling holostar testing his bravery on a mining planet, things like that. People underestimate her because she’s pretty and petite. That works in her favor.

Her arm aches. Two weeks ago, she got the Wolf pinned in a narrow alley in a city on the last planet, and he left three jagged wounds up the inside of her forearm. They’re not quite healed and sometimes, when she moves wrong or she holds her bow too long, it burns. Cold water doesn’t ease the heat.

Sometimes, something crawls up her arm just beneath her skin.

Out here, they’re alone, no collateral damage. She’s not gonna lose him this time.

The smell of him goes straight up the cliff. Bits of fur do too. She slings her bow across her back and climbs after. Rocks tear at her fingers, rip her nails. Blood smears across her skin, mixing with dust until mud fills the wounds.

A shower of pebbles is the only warning she gets before the Wolf swipes down at her. She releases her right arm, swings to the left, and the hard shift of her weight nearly jerks her left hand free. The Wolf’s claws catch only the ends of her hair.

She lets go, drops a foot before she catches herself. Scrabbles sideways. The Wolf’s growling fills her ears, the stench of him steals her breath. Rocks slam down around her, bigger this time. One clocks her shoulder hard enough to numb her arm. Another catches her in the temple, jagged edged. Blood spills into her eyes, blinding her.

When the next rock hits, she can’t help it. Her fingers cramp, she loses her grip, and she falls.

  
  
  
  


 

Red wakes in a cryobed, the lid open and Cinderella watching her.

“Princess,” Red says, voice cracked. She doesn’t sound like herself, and it’s not nearly as sarcastic as she means.

Cinderella snorts. “Told you not to call me that.”

“Once a pretty pretty princess, always a pretty pretty princess.” It’s too many words at once. She coughs, jagged, and pain explodes through her chest.

“Told you not to call me that.” Cinderella shoots her a sharp smile, but slides off the counter. Red coughs and listens to her footsteps. They echo, but just a little. Metal room, not a lot of space. It’s a ship. Not Red’s, which is far too small for a cryobed. 

She gags for air, breathe shaking loose by the coughing, and curses as best she can. She’s on their damn ship. Again. 

Cinderella brings her cool water. Each mouthful is caught in a bubble, thin gel that dissolves on her tongue. It soothes her throat even more than the water.

“You need to stop jumping off things,” Cinderella tells her. She leans one hip against the edge of the cryobed. “You’re not any good at it.”

Red glowers at her. Pain flashes down the side of her face. She touches a hand to her temple, light. Her fingers scrabble over the bandage she finds. It stretches from her temple all the way down to her jaw.

“Where’d he go?” she growls. Her voice rasps in her throat, low and rough.

Cinderella shakes her head. “I assume you mean the Wolf.” There’s a wry twist to her tone. “Because that’s always who you talk about. And I don’t know. He was gone before we caught up to you.”

Red blinks. “You were following me?”

“Good thing we did, too. You would have bled out there in the dirt.”

Red pounds her fist against the rim of the cryobed. “Damn it.”

Cinderella catches her hand before she can hit it again. “Stop that,” she says. Her voice is soft, her touch gentle. “You’ll get him.”

Red gazes up at her. Last time, she’d run into Cinderella in a backwater bar drinking the most expensive alcohol in the place, which was still rotgut. They’d gone glass for glass no matter how much it burned. 

Cinderella kissed her, after. Then the Wolf’d popped up on Red’s radar, the soft alarm dinging from her codex, and she’d taken off after him. Cinderella’d thrown the bottle after  _ her _ .

“Get me back to my ship,” she said.

“You’re welcome for saving your life,” Cinderella chirps. “You’re welcome for patching you up. You’re welcome for bringing you into our home.”

Red rolls her eyes. Even that hurts. “Thank you, Princess, for being my knight in shining armor.”

Cinderella shoves away from the bed. “Don’t call me that!” she snaps. There’s a flash of something angry and hurt in her dark eyes, and she storms away. 

  
  
  
  
  
Red stays alone for hours. Dozes a little. Tries to wait out Cinderella, but eventually her stomach gurgles and clenches. She needs food. She eases out of the cryobed and makes her way out of the room, bracing herself against various things as she goes. She’s cleaner than she’d been last she remembered, and her clothes, too. She’s been out long enough for that to happen, though it never takes too long to clean up with sonic showers and clothes vibrators.

Out in the hall, she hears the ship itself, engines humming and the rattle of the metal as people move through it. 

She follows the low, muted sound of voices until she finds the galley. Cinderella isn’t there, but Sleeping Beauty is, perched on one side of the long table, hands neatly folded in front of her, as prim and pristine as could be despite the worn metal around her. Not that the ship is dirty, but it’s run down and older, and Beauty looks out of place in her light colors and long blonde hair.

Whoever she was talking to is long gone.

“Oh,” she says, one eyebrow arched. “You finally decided to wake up.”

Red rolls her eyes and flops down onto the bench across from her. “We can’t all be champion nappers like you,” she says, but unlike Cinderella, Beauty’s near unflappable.

“True,” she says. “And thank goodness we can’t all be as irresponsible and reckless as you. I don’t think Cinderella could handle healing everyone if they went around injuring themselves as much as you do.”

Red touches one hand to her ribs. They ache some, still, but not nearly as much as they should what with falling off the cliff and all. Cinderella has good tech, tech that not even most of the more established settlements usually have. She’s got skill at healing, too.

And she uses it on Red, not just her crew. That makes Red feel all warm and squirmy inside.

She’ll have to make it up to Cinderella somehow. Without letting on how she feels, of course. No sense in letting Cinderella get a big head.

Red changes the subject before any of it could show in her expression. “I’m starved. I’ll trade work for food.”

Beauty thumbs toward the cupboard, the doors sealed against sudden loss of pressure. “Snow said you’re to eat whatever you want,” she says. There’s no emotion in her voice, no hint of how she feels in her expression. She stands, slow, regal. “You’re to have the run of the ship, too. You know what’s off limits.”

Red smiles, bares her teeth. “Do you?” she asks and makes a show of looking Beauty over.

“I do not roll in the dirt, little girl,” Beauty tells her, baring her own teeth, “and I do not sully my body with those who do.”

Red makes a rude gesture at her as she walks out of the room, off down the hall in the opposite direction from the sick-bay. 

The food is plain, but well flavored, hard rolls with soft interiors melting with garlic and spice; heavy jugs of melon cider sweet-sour on her tongue; and something like cheese that melts on her fingers when she touches it but comes away clean when she closes her mouth and sucks.

Despite all the sleep, she’s tired after, and sore. She makes her way back, settles in the cryo-bed. Leaves the lid open.

The lights dim some. The ship grows quiet. Red sleeps. She does not dream.

  
  
  


 

 

The ship remains silent and still when Red wakes again. Most of the pain is gone. Her ribs only give a little twinge when she climbs out of the cryobed. The exhaustion that had muffled her for so long has faded, too, leaving her body pulsing with energy and her mind clearer than it has been since before the Wolf came to her settlement and killed everyone she knew. Even her anger has faded into a low simmer, strong enough to drive her desires but not overwhelming.

Red goes wandering. Looking for Cinderella, really, but relearning the ship, too. It hasn’t much changed since the last time she’d found herself on board, back when she’d been looking for a ride off planet, first learning how to track across worlds. She’d been good on her home planet, knew all the plants and animals, all the ways people tried to hide their passage. It was something different out here in the black.

Red makes it all the way to the cockpit before she finds Cinderella. She takes a moment to admire the space; it’s much bigger than her own ship, since she’d barely been able to scrape together enough money for one that could break atmo, and Rapunzel keeps the space in good working order. Clean, too, except for some of the long hairs scattered on the floor around her chair. 

Cinderella sits in the copilot seat, knees pulled up to her chest, heels resting on the seat. She has her arms around her calves, her chin on her knees, and she stares out at the vast darkness. She’s not a pilot, but Red knows well the peace that came with a quiet ship and the universe stretched out before you. Cinderella didn’t have to be a pilot to appreciate all that.

Red sinks down into the pilot’s seat. Cinderella doesn’t look at her. Doesn’t say anything. Red fidgets. Tries to wait. She knows the trick Cinderella’s using, but she falls for it anyway. Most people talk just to break the silence if it drags on more than a second or two.

“Do you know what happened to my ship?” she asks.

Cinderella nods, but still doesn’t look at her. “I think the Wolf took it,” she says. “We found the one he was using. It was just a puddle jumper. He’d pushed it too hard. Crashed on the planet. Don’t think it can be fixed. We salvaged it for scrap.”

Red closes her eyes. Her ship’s crappy, but it’s hers. The thought of the Wolf in it, sitting in her pilot seat, touching her things, leaving his stench everywhere, makes her sick with fury.

“We can help, you know.” Cinderella’s voice is quiet.

Red scoffs and opens her eyes. Cinderella still isn’t looking at her. “What do you know about hunting?”

“We know a lot about vengeance,” she says. She cuts a quick, sideways glance at Red. “And about how much easier it is with a team.”

“I work better alone.”

“Mmmm.” Cinderella tips her head to the side, swivels the chair to face Red. “A lone wolf, you say.”

Red glares. Cinderella responds with a serene smile.

“I do fine on my own.”

“You do,” Cinderella says. “Mostly. But you don’t have to.”

Silence settles over them again. Cinderella watches Red; the weight of her attention makes Red’s skin prickle. Red watches the universe unfolding before them.

“You sure your captain’s as gungho as you?” Red finally asks.

Cinderella laughs. “Snow likes the hunt. Doesn’t care what.”

Red’s palms are damp. She wipes them dry on her breeches. “Maybe I’ll stick around,” she says. “Least til I get my ship back.”

“Least til then,” Cinderella echos. Red chooses to ignore the laughter beneath her light tone.

A yawn cracks Red’s jaw open. She doesn’t expect it. She’s slept enough there was no way she could possibly be tired, but she is.

Cinderella stands, offering Red her hand. “Come on. I’ll show you my bunk.”

Well then. That’s a good reason to stay, too.

Red presses her palm to Cinderella’s, curls their fingers together. Lets Cinderella lead her through the ship. Lets Cinderella take her to her bunk. Lets Cinderella strip away her clothes.

Red puts lips and teeth and tongue to her after, until they lie together after, crowded close in the narrow bed, sated and slick with sweat. The Wolf lingers in her thoughts, always, and the rage that comes with it. But there, listening to the quiet hum of the engine, tucked warm and comfortable in the belly of a ship, she feels, beneath that anger, something like peace.

She’ll find the Wolf yet, Cinderella by her side.


End file.
